Damaged Goods

by James Christopher MongerReleased in 2003, Career Suicide saw Lennon trade in her Marshall stacks for a piano and a string section, marking her first foray into singer/songwriter land. It was an uneven but promising move, exposing both her strengths and weaknesses and the Band-Aids she often uses to cover both of them up. On Damaged Goods the heavy metal siren brings the band back in, turns it up to 11 sometimes, and delivers the kind of pseudo-gothic modern rock that won her opening slots for Alice Cooper and Monster Magnet, as well as a coveted spot on the Warped Tour. At her best, Lennon Murphy deftly balances the rage and innocence of early Tori Amos with Alanis Morissette, and songs like "No One Knows," "My Sins," and "Just One" find the perfect middle ground between the post-teen pop of Avril Lavigne and the pasty-faced gloom of Evanescence, but the majority of this unnecessarily long (17 tracks) exercise in alternative metal schizophrenia feels about as fresh as the term "riot grrl."